The Link Manager is one of Raven’s more unique tools — with it you can manage your entire link building process from beginning to end. You can keep track of as much information as needed in the process.

Here is a breakdown of every field within an add-link window in the Link Manager.



Owner

Every user in the system will be in this drop down. By default the owner is you, but you can assign ownership to another user.

Status

Choose one of the following:

Queued: Saved for later
Requested: Requested, not active
Active: Link is currently active
Inactive: Link is no longer active
Declined: Requested, but declined
Ignore: Do not build a link to this site

Creation date

This is auto-filled with the current date, but you can change it if you want to.

Link Type

Choose the type of link that you are building. (You can also create your own custom link type.)

User submitted: Manually added
Content exchange: Distributed content
Paid (permanent): One-time fee
Paid (temporary): Renting link
Blog comment: Left comment
Organic link: Naturally occurred
Indirect/other: Everything else
Affiliate: Link for affiliate campaign
Competitor backlink: Utilized when running Yahoo! Backlink Import

Anchor Text

Enter the keyword(s) used for the link.

Link URL

Enter the URL of your site.

Tags

If you’re working with a team, it can sometimes help to use tags for links. Frequently used tags are listed below this box — click on one to auto-populate with that tags. From the main Link Manager view, you can search for tags in the keyword field.

Link status

If you check the link status box, the Raven Tools system will check every 30 days for changes to the link record, such as status changes, whether the anchor text is correct, even if the Page Rank of a website has changed.

Assign task

Assign tasks to other members of your team from this page, such as asking someone to make contact with a website owner requesting a link. (See last week’s Tip Tuesday!)

Website URL

This is the exact URL where your link is going to live. If you have link monitoring activated, this is the exact URL Raven is going to check.

Main Contact

You can add contact information for the site. If you or someone else on your team has already filled in contact information for the site, it will appear automatically.

Website Type

Choose the type of website you are building the link to. You also have the ability to create custom website types.

Original Page Rank

Enter the Page Rank for the site now.

Current Page Rank

Raven Tools will update the Page Rank every 30 days if a change has occurred (if you have the Link Status box checked).

Quality Score

The Raven Tools internal score on the overall health of a site.

Comments

If you need to leave a note for yourself or another team member about a site, record them here and they’ll stay with the link record through its life.

And don’t forget…

This process is made even easier by using the Raven Firefox toolbar. If you come across a site you’d like to build a link to, just click on the “Add Link” button in the toolbar, and Raven will autofill as much information for you as possible.

Also, certain aspects of the Link Manager have changed purely because of a request from our users, so if there is a field that would simplify your work, let us know.